Whispers in the Dark
by Gilbert H. Karr
Summary: This is the story of an Orion slave girl by the name of Barin. This story was written as a series of seven ficlets, for the Ficlet Flashdance challenge, which was Week 1 of the Twelve Trials of Triskelion 2014, at Ad Astra. Rated M to be safe.
1. In the Beginning

Whispers in the Dark

_Seven year old Barin struggled to keep up with the long strides of her Mommy and Daddy as they hurried through the space port. Her brother, Otaru, being ten, did a bit better. She was a small girl, with delicate green skin and amber eyes, like a cat. She was trying to move fast, like the rest of her family, to prove that she was big enough to keep up and didn't need to be carried. As they rounded a corner, practically running toward the boarding gate, she stumbled, red curls falling into her face. As she tried to brush them away, she heard a high pitched whine, and felt a rough hand close over hers, hauling her to her feet and then hoisting her into the air, and tucking her under a massive arm, where she hung suspended sideways in the air. _

_Usually, she loved when her father carried her, but not like this. As he ran, she bounced, and she began to feel slightly nauseated. She began to cry, and she begged him to put her down, but the only heed he paid was to put a large hand over her mouth. _

"_Silence," he hissed, and her eyes grew wide. That voice, it was not her father's. Not knowing what else to do, but knowing she did not want to go with this person, she began kicking and flailing, and she sank her teeth into his hand, drawing blood. With a muttered curse, he took the hand away, and turned her upright. For a brief moment, she thought he was going to put her_ _down, but he didn't. Instead, she felt pain explode across the back of her head and down to her legs. It was a moment before she realized he had hit her, hard. When he put her down, she sank to her knees, and just sat there, sobbing and trying to catch her breath. He yanked her to her feet, and dragged her, facing backwards, feet barely touching the floor, for what seemed an eternity, and then he stopped. She heard doors open and felt the temperature change, so she knew they had walked into another room, though he had her facing away, so she could only see what was behind her. Roughly, he turned her around, shoved her into a seat, and drew a large, scary looking knife. As he sat down across from her, he hissed, "Any more trouble, little miss, and you won't live to see where we are going." He spoke to one of his companions, "What about the others?"_

_She heard a cruel laugh, and another voice answered. "By the time they wake up, she'll be so far away they'll never find her. They won't remember what happened, either." She started screaming, and her captor brandished the knife. Leaning back to avoid it, she felt herself falling. She was in freefall, forever, and then she felt her head hit something soft, and she awoke, sweating profusely._


	2. Year 2

Year 2:

The room was dark and cold and sterile. Barin and the other girls huddled against the wall, scared to move, scared to speak, scared to breathe. They feared they would be heard. Heard and punished. Their hands were chained above their heads, and they sat in a row on the hard, metal bench, too close together. The room was stuffy, and it smelled of sweat and fear and something else. They were no longer people, but faceless, voiceless, barefoot masses of matter and energy in long dresses, with tangled matted hair and empty eyes. Seeing and feeling and hearing too much was dangerous. So was hope. It made them a little crazy, at times, and it was at those times that things happened—things like the incident this morning.

The girl involved was not much older than Barin, maybe eleven, but she had been here longer. How much longer was hard to say, as time was not the same here as it was in other places. No one knew for sure what had happened, whether it was the heat, or the closeness, or the smell, but something got to her this morning, and she began to scream and rattle her handcuffs against the bar that held her arms above her head. She screamed and screamed and wouldn't stop screaming. All they wanted was for her to stop. They tried to get her to stop. They pleaded and begged, and when that didn't help, they screamed as loud as she. Nothing worked. Finally, the guards heard the noise, and they came and dragged her out.

That felt like an eternity ago, and she had not yet been returned. A sort of tension filled the air in the room, as they collectively held their breaths and waited. They wondered what might happen to her, and if she had managed to stop screaming. Finally, with a massive grinding sound, the heavy iron door scraped the stone as it slid into the wall, and the guards sent her sailing inside. She was quiet. So very quiet. In the shadows, they could see that her face was bruised and swollen. She could barely walk. She stumbled and fell and she couldn't get back up. So, she laid there on the cold, hard, stone floor like someone's discarded sack of rotten potatoes, and the girls watched helplessly while she breathed her last. No one could go to her, to comfort her or hold her hand. This was their prison, and her tomb, and it all made them feel like screaming and screaming, and refusing to stop, but they didn't. They knew it wouldn't help. Instead, they turned their empty eyes away, and sat there, pretending it was all a bad dream. Hoping it would go away. Knowing it wouldn't. Wondering when their turn would come.


	3. Year 5

Year 5:  
The night was still. Most of the women had learned to sleep with their arms chained above their heads, and so most were sleeping, chin tucked into their chests. Barin had grown thin, almost emaciated because she didn't have an appetite anymore, but she was surprised on that night two weeks ago, when her hands slipped out of the shackles binding her to the pole that ran along the top of the wall above the bench on which they were all seated. The guards had taken to leaving the door cracked at night. They had started doing that not long ago, after several of the women had died of suffocation when they simply ran out of oxygen in the sealed room. The crack wasn't very wide, but Barin thought she might fit through it. She knew she had to do this carefully. One mistake and the guards would know her secret, and then there wouldn't be another opportunity.

Checking to be sure that no one was awake and watching, she slipped her hands out of the shackles, and her heart nearly stopped when they clanged against the stone wall. She froze, heart pounding in her chest, waiting to see if anyone heard. No one came, so after a moment, she dared look at the women around her. All were still sleeping, gentle snores rising from their chests. Moving quickly and utterly silently, she made her way to the door. She paused, listening, and after a moment, she decided there was no one around, and started the process of squeezing through the crack. It only took a moment, and she was shocked at how easily she fit through there. Anxiety rose in her chest when she found the area outside their chamber deserted. She had expected guards. Was it really to be this easy?

Unable to remember the route they had taken when she came here five years ago, and totally unfamiliar with the place otherwise, she began moving tentatively down one hallway, trying to find a way to the outside. Barin felt a breeze and followed it. She came to a great steel door and pulled with all of her might. The door finally popped open and sent her sailing back against the wall. She breathed a sigh of relief to find that she had muffled the sound. So far, so good.

She stepped outside, closing the door behind her carefully, and heard a growl. She had not counted on the dogs. Shrinking back against the wall, she stood very still, hoping he would lose interest.

"Trying to escape were we?" The guard, whose dog it was that found her, stood staring. He seized her, dragging her down the hallway in the opposite direction, and right into a large chamber where the other members of the Syndicate were sleeping.

In a loud voice, he said, "Look what I found wandering the courtyard. I think we need to teach her what happens to those who try to escape."


	4. Year 8, Part 1

Year 8: (Wed)

Barin just lay on the ground of the forest outside the cave, allowing the rain to wash over her, but doubting it would ever wash her clean. Her white dress was covered with diluted green dots and orange streaks of blood. She wanted to get up, to dress the cuts on her body, to stop the bleeding, but she couldn't. The pain was too much. For the past three years, since the incident on the night she tried to escape, she'd had a permanent limp. She suspected they broke her leg when they beat her that night, based on how much it hurt to walk on it after that, but she knew what would happen if she said anything, so she didn't, and eventually, walking became bearable again. Until last night.

After her failed escape attempt, she had been sold for the pleasure of a smuggler, a Tellarite. Though he wasn't actually a member, he was a friend of the Syndicate, and when he wasn't smuggling goods from one world or another, he lived on a little backwater planet outside the jurisdiction of any major power in her world and just barely inside the shipping lanes. The people there kept to themselves, and did pretty much as they wished. Last night, he broke into the 'goods' he was smuggling and found some very potent, very illegal alcohol. In the three years she had been here, not a day had gone by that he had not beaten her or used her in some other way for his own pleasure, but last night was different. Worse. Last night, he'd had friends over. Last night, they were all drunk. Last night, they had held her down while he breathed his hot, rancid breath in her face and carved his initials into the flesh of her stomach. He had told her that that meant she was his property. That was just before she passed out from the pain, or the fear, or maybe a combination of both. She didn't know what he had done after that—what any of them had done, though judging by the amount of blood on her when she came to, she decided that maybe it was better that she didn't know. She had always had a vivid imagination.

She had forced herself to get up, with a mind to assess her injuries and clean herself up, but when she found the Tellarite passed out nearby, along with two of his buddies, that thought fled. She picked up the knife, which had fallen from his hand in his stupor, and with deliberate malice, plunged it into his heart and twisted it. The three were dispatched in a matter of minutes, and she walked out of that house, as far as she could go, not looking back, until she collapsed where she was lying now, letting the rain do what she could not. She knew she couldn't stay. She had to go before someone found her. Before the others returned.


	5. Year 8, Part 2

Year 8, Part 2:

After a time, the rain stopped, and Barin felt stronger, so she rose from where she lay on the ground. Her head was spinning and her heart pounded in her chest. She felt like a bird that had flown into someone's house, and was flapping around, panicked, desperately trying to find a door. Where would she go? She couldn't go back inside the smuggler's house. What if she was found there? She didn't see another choice. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to calm down, to think. If anyone found her looking like this, they would know instantly what she had done. There was a creek in back of the house. She knew that because he had threatened to drown her there often enough. Walking carefully around, ready to hide at the first sign of danger, she finally reached the creek. She waded out until the water covered her shoulders, then slipped out of her dress, and simply stood, letting the water wash her cuts. She scrubbed at the spots and streaks of blood on her dress, rubbing the material together frantically. Finally, though it wasn't white any longer, she was satisfied that the dress was mostly all one color, and would not give her away. There was no time to let it dry, and anyway, she didn't plan to stay here with no clothes on until it did. So, she put it back on and waded out of the creek.

A gentle mist was falling again as she made her way back around the house. Happening to look down, she saw the knife, right where she had dropped it before. Ruthlessly, she wiped the blood on it on the grass at her feet, and tucked the knife into an inside pocket of her dress. She wasn't allowing herself to think too much about anything. That way lay insanity. She knew the smuggler had a craft of some sort, and she knew the building to the side of the house had to be where he kept it. That door was locked. So was the window. So, she just started walking. She didn't know how long she walked, staying under the cover of trees and hiding behind bushes, until she walked up on the back of a large, low, stone structure. She was facing a door. Terrified to go inside, she slipped around the side of the building, and found herself in the busy parking lot of the space port. Blending in with the crowd, she made her way to the other side of the building, and saw a craft with an open door. Checking to be sure no one was around, she made her way inside, and hid herself in the cargo storage compartment. She sat there, as quiet as death, not daring to move. After a while, she heard the engines of the shuttle roar to life and the door close, and then she felt it lift off into the air.


	6. Year 8, Part 3

Year 8, Part 3:

Barin's status as a stowaway in the cargo hold had only lasted until the long range shuttle made its first stop. It was at that point that the door whooshed open, and a bewildered Orion guard stood in the doorway. _Oh, no! _thought Barin. _ A Syndicate ship. _Before she could do anything, he strode forward, grabbed her arm, and frog marched her to the small bridge of the shuttle. They stopped just inside the doorway, and the Orion captain turned to see who was coming onto his bridge. Her heart sank when she realized she had seen this Orion captain before. He was called Thak, and she had sometimes seen him among the Syndicate members who held her before she was sold to the smuggler, though why he was there, she didn't know.

"What is this?"

"I found her in the shuttle bay, sir," said the guard.

"Leave her here, and take your post. I believe we may do battle soon."

With a bow, the guard was gone, and she was alone with this Orion pirate. She cowered back against the wall. Pulling her forward, he twisted her arm until she cried out in pain and terror.

"I don't know how you got away from the Tellarite, girl, but you are mine now, and I will teach you your place. Later, you will do nicely as a trade to that ship out there. They have cargo that is of some value to me."

He shoved her back against the wall so hard that she fell, and then she was momentarily forgotten as his attention was riveted to the view-screen in front of him. The two smaller ships had ganged up on the larger one, and disabled it. After a moment, he watched in horror as the last vestiges of the bright light that signaled the end of the Tellarite ship faded into the all-encompassing darkness of space, as the ship destroyed itself. Thak had been skulking at the extreme range of their sensors, waiting. Now, he had to make a decision—stay here and try to salvage the mission, or turn tail and run before the two others ships caught wind of him.

Throwing out a command to his bridge crew to maintain battle stations, in case they were followed, he gave the order to head for home territory, and then grasping Barin by the hair, he dragged her down the hall toward his cabin. Once inside, he ripped her dress off and the knife clattered to the floor. He picked it up, slipped it into the back of his boot, and forced her down onto his bunk. With detached indifference, she gave him what he wanted, crying silent tears at how badly it hurt, and wondering if he was going to sell her off again or kill her. She knew her prospects weren't good, now that the other ship had been destroyed, and she vowed to get off this ship any way she could.


	7. Year 8, Part 4

Year 8, Part 4:

_I must have made some sound because the Orion captain put his hands around my neck and began to choke me. As my consciousness dimmed, and greyness overtook my vision, I knew that this was the end, and I wondered what dying felt like. _

_I don't know how much time passed between that last thought and the time I opened my eyes again. I don't even know why he didn't kill me. I just know he didn't. When I again became aware of the world around me, the Orion's cabin was empty. I was on the floor, covered in blood, and every part of my body hurt. I was also naked and freezing. Then, I found my dress wadded up in a ball where Thak had discarded it, and though it was now torn all down the front, I wrapped it around me like a robe. _

_The ship shook like it had been hit by something, and it was then that I realized where everyone was. Battle stations. The ship shook again, and I was thrown to the deck, and then the lights got really dim and it was harder to breathe. After a few moments, I heard a humming sound. Lights danced in front of my eyes, and I couldn't move. What was— _

—_happening? As I finished that thought, the scene around me disappeared. I was somewhere else. The room was different. There were many people pointing weapons at us. All of the Orion crew on the ship, including Thak, were there. I scuttled back against the wall. The man in front made a motion with his hand, and the others in his party surrounded the men with me, and walked them out of the room. He started to move toward me, and I tried to back up, but I was already against the wall, so I made myself smaller, and watched to see what he would do. The man standing next to him stopped him with a word. _

_Very slowly, the second man walked toward me, speaking softly. I still didn't trust him. When he reached me, he knelt down and showed me an object in his hand. _

"_This is a tri-corder. It'll show me what's going on with you." _

_I didn't move to take it, so he pointed it at me. It took awhile but he finally convinced me to trust them enough to allow treatment in sickbay. _

_My story has been most painful to tell, but Doctor McCoy says it is necessary. For healing. He also says that making this final entry in first person means I am making progress. This concludes the final entry of the healing journal of Barin, a recovered Orion slave girl. _

Barin turned off the log, and leaned back in her chair. "Healing isn't that simple, Doctor," she said quietly.

The guard who came to check on her later found the completed journal, and Barin, dead, with a hole in her chest from a stolen phaser.


End file.
